Camp 14: Total Control Zone (2012) User Reviews

Great Insight into North Korea

[TheExpatriate700 · 8/10 · 26 August 2013]

Camp 14: Total Control Zone is a genuinely disturbing documentary about a young man who escaped from a North Korean prison camp where he had lived since birth. It paints a genuinely horrifying portrait of a totalitarian regime and its capacity to dehumanize its subjects.

The film's main narrative focuses on the experiences of a man who was born to North Korean prisoners and spent his entire childhood in the prison camp. He relates experiences such as his first memory-an execution-daily life within the camp, informing on people, and being tortured by the camp guards. His story is supplemented with footage smuggled out of North Korea and former camp guards who defected to the South.

Camp 14 is at its best when it relates the psychological effects on the inmates, particularly those born there. However, the interviews with the guards could have benefited from more background, particularly their reasons for defecting. Furthermore, no source or explanation is given for the footage from North Korea, leading to questions regarding its veracity.

Interesting

[josephloveys · 8/10 · 23 November 2021]

I've been interested in North Korea for years and have heard a few stories about people's escapes into China and then later resettling in South Korea. There's some good videos on YouTube about that. This one was different as Shin was born in a death camp and I'd never heard much of that experience before. It's incredible what this guy experienced in his life, and of course tragic too. Just today I happened to find the book Escape from Camp 14 in the library, so I'm guessing that will add more details to this remarkable story.

Great Movie almost the same as the book

[e-32821 · 8/10 · 15 December 2017]

. The book had a lot of details that the movie didn't such as how Shin ripped his leg on the fence as he tried to escape. In the movie it didn't show that he had hurt himself while trying to escape besides from the guards. How i can prove this is that i've watched the movie before i read the book. The book has much more imagery and important details that the movie simply left out.

The range of human capacity for good and evil at both ends of the spectrum are shockingly revealing

[whosjohnnyt · 9/10 · 24 January 2013]

I don't know where to begin.

After exhaustive study of various Medieval torture and execution methods and Chinese's thousands way to die – I thought I could stomach anything. This is different. There are no gores. No screaming special effects. Shortest recounts follow by a deafening silence. And the indifference a fellow human being can be taught to be totally devoid of emotions or compassion for another and even to one's own family member. Words escape me because even in post 21st century an evil this horrifying still exists among us.

I don't know how to continue.

Depending on whether you are able to empathize with intense human conditions, you'll either hate it for being boring or laud it for its courage and fortitude. Shin Dong-hyuk, born 1982, is believed to be the only known person born in a North Korean prison camp that escaped to tell the tale. Due to his extraordinary circumstances, for the very first time, we're witnessing a difficult and painful recount of memories he wish he never had to revisit – in fact, on several occasions, the memories were so intense – he attempt to stop the interview. During his long pauses – I stared at him – attempting to connect to his soul; I can feel a boiling of emotions – using my own imaginations – it's harrowing. I actually felt bad he had to relive these painful memories but someone has to do it sooner or later so the world would know. Ex-prison guards who now live in South Korea are interviewed as well.

One observation: after watching the film, I felt Shin has his soul torn out literally - he couldn't cry or shed tears even as a memory deeply disturbs him. He at times felt anger but that soft human side that takes years of love to nurture – that's missing. I am deeply saddened. Maybe in time, he will find peace in his own ways.

I will stop here. If you should watch it, it is not for the faint of heart. There are many thoughts flying through my minds right now, how lucky we are, the innocence of a pure heart vs. a world run by money, what is it to be human, how low can a human go if they're deprived of love and how in the darkest hour a human affection can redeem a soul.

This is not just a movie review – it's a call to action. Join grassroots movement, write to international bodies for human rights, and spread the word. For the day the N. Korean prison camps fall, it will be a huge triumph for humanity.

This guy is a survivor...

[jlance988 · 10/10 · 22 May 2013]

!!!@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@!!!!!!!! I came across this movie after seeing shin speak about his experience on Anderson Cooper. I knew it was going to be a sad story, one of torture and the freedom of escape from a horrible place....What really struck me, is at the end when he says that he misses his pure heart and would rather live in the camp he came from and endure the beatings and abuse than to live in the modern world with the constant struggle for money and the constant worry that comes with everyday life....What does this say about modern day society? This man still knows no peace even with freedom because we are still slaves to something, all of us. I can only imagine wanting to taste something you only ever heard about, to think you are in heaven and then to be let down by it and realizing the places are different, the situation different but you still are not free. He misses the ignorance of his sheltered life. It makes me sad for humanity that consumerism and greediness has ruined us. And we wonder how people can be institutionalized and even feel a comfort after time in it? I understand it, and I wish him all the best the world can offer him. I thought it was a great documentary and an eye opener!

Reveals the darkest parts of the human condition and an amazing story of survival

[carlvdl · 9/10 · 9 July 2013]

Camp 14: Total Control Zone documents the harrowing details of 'life' in North Korea's forced labour camps from 3 perspectives, a former inmate born within one of the camps who managed to escape, a former guard, and a former member of the secret police.

I do not want to give the story away for those who have yet to see it, but what these stories reveal is a world where a level of cruelty and disregard for human life exists that struggles to be dreamt up in infamous works of fiction by Pasolini or de Sade (some details a chilling reminder of scenes from 1975's 'Salo').

The police and guards, who are the purveyors of this cruelty (and there must be a lot of them given the claimed 200,000 interned) can't all statistically be psychopaths. Operating under a ruthless system, they'd doubtlessly be users of the Nuremberg Defence.

We read about the actions of the psychopath serial killer, which are a conundrum in themselves, but when this sort of behaviour manifests itself across a whole society, it becomes ... well, I can't find the right word.

What sort of fear and desperation would lead to a society being created based on force feeding the populace lies and leader worship, ignorance replacing civic dialogue, with forced labour, torture and death being the only solution to needing a justice system (and for that matter, unemployment)?

Only through a miraculous if not morbid event does the protagonist (Shin Dong-Hyuk) manage to escape the camp, and we are thankful he does, in order to experience freedom and provide the rest of the world with a brief but revealing peek into the horror show.

Some of his revelations will prompt the viewer question the nature of human instincts. Seemingly we are born with no emotional attachment to our family or fellow human beings, only the will to survive appears to be firmly ingrained in us.

As Camp 14 draws to a close, we get a sense of ennui and confusion from Shin at his new surroundings. He appears far from joyful at having left the life he was born into, inexplicable to the rest of us, as inexplicable and impenetrable as the conditions in which he was born into.

Heart breaking

[stipvukic · 10/10 · 18 February 2022]

Story about dehumanisation. This guy is true hero. Ending is kind a sad and shocking. Hope future will deal with this and similar regimes. North Korea is Orwel's 1984 kind of nightmare.

Great Story, Bad Movie

[tjwhale · 5/10 · 25 May 2014]

I want to review this film in two halves.

The story is just incredible, so powerful and moving, it's so hard to believe these places exist.

Shin obviously struggles with recalling his past and it is important to hear what he has to say.

So that part of it is good.

However I think the film as a film is pretty bad.

All of the information is much too spaced out, there are long pauses between every statement.

Some of the movie has a voice over translation and some of it has subtitles which is a bit disorientating.

And in the last 10 minutes Shin makes some statements which are startling and shocking and really change the interpretation of the whole of the rest of the movie.

Which is very badly handled as really, in my opinion, those statements should have come half way through the movie and there should have been an extended investigation into them.

The film maker is handed a unique opportunity to talk to one of the most interesting people on the planet and really bungles it, not getting into the depths of the issue, just telling the story as is.

Though there is a power in that. The story speaks for itself with such intensity it is worth watching just for that.

Chilling

[Goloh · 1/10 · 6 May 2014]

No rational person can doubt the ferocity of life in DPRK. Nobody is safe, and I don't doubt at all the basic truths of this film. But I have one question, maybe I just missed the explanation but in a country where there is no individualism and everyone spies on everyone else--which we assume to be the case--how could a 14-year-old boy, after escaping from a labour camp like this, just turn up in a nearby village and hang out there with no money, no work, no relatives, no friends, and more importantly no contacts to shield him from local police or camp guards who knew he escaped and must have been looking for him? The film did say the frozen river made it easier then to cross into China, but he had no prior knowledge of the outside world apart from what he was told by his cellmate? It could not have been as "easy" as the film made it sound, given the circumstances of the escape and even the time of year when it would have been very cold.

On other points, the interlude among the group preparing for a road trip in support of Free DPRK was jarring in that it didn't lighten the mood, it just seemed out of place. And the chain-smoking ex-guard was pure evil, far more than any fictional character.